The Well-Tempered Pianist: exploring a pianist's life through music

A few years ago, at the age of 40,  I found myself struggling to "make it" as a professional musician. I seem to have always found distractions in my life to keep me from whole-heartedly pursuing what it is I truly love the most so this wasn't a complete change or anything, but that didn't make my mid-life crisis any easier to deal with.

After school, I got married. 
After getting married I was a music-minister's wife and my role was by my husband's side (at least that was my excuse.)
After he left church work and was pursuing his doctorate I had to bring home a salary to support us.
After he got his first teaching job at a university, I got pregnant.

You get the picture.

When our daughter got to be old enough, I dropped the mom excuse and earnestly attempted to piece together a musical career, through collaborative work, teaching at a local university, and then as a practice coach. Nothing really worked out for various reasons. Door after door closed. I took at it as personal rejection when in reality, I think it had more to do with me always finding excuses to not keep at it.

Then I hit 40. I felt utterly disappointed in myself. Music is my passion. Music is my religion. Music is quite simply me and I had let it slip out of my hands.

A few years before I had told myself that someday I wanted to have learned all 24 preludes and fugues from Bach's second book of the Well-Tempered Clavier. I dreamed of being able to sit down and play through all 24. That would be my all I would need to die happy and feeling like I had done something. 

It took a while, a couple of years I believe, but I did just that. I got them all learned. But then that wasn't enough. I decided I wanted to perform them all.  But who wants to sit and listen to all 24 at one sitting?  Or two sittings? That's when my Well-Tempered Pianist series popped into my mind.  

I decided that I would put together 6 recitals. Each one would feature 4 preludes and fugues and I would intersperse among them pieces that meant something to me from throughout my musical life, The series would be my musical autobiography.  

I'm now near the end of my second presentation of the entire series and I am so very thankful that I've been able to do this and that people have received it with such interest, acceptance, and excitement.  In between pieces I've been taking a few moments to walk the audience through my life and to connect the music I'm performing with the most significant points in my timeline. That too has been enlightening to me although I have to admit sometimes it's been a bit distracting to talk about an aspect of my life that meant a lot to me and then have to perform. I often find my mind and heart dwelling on what I just talked about and see the colors and sounds I normally associate with a given piece of music change into something I've never quite considered. In spite of some surprises in that way, it's been incredibly rewarding, especially since the audience has been receiving it so well too. Each recital finds me talking with audience members for quite some time afterwards, answering questions, hearing their own stories...it's been a tangibly reciprocal series of events.  

As for my mid-life crisis, I'm still in the middle of it. The recital series didn't fix that little problem. But it did remind me that even though I may not be able to support myself as a professional musician, I am a pianist with a very musical soul and people want to hear me and hear the music I have to offer them. That is enough for me...for now.

I highly recommend musicians do something like this if they think it might be of interest to them. So often I think we don't think the audiences want to know about who we are; that we are there to serve the music and that is all. What I'm finding, however, is that at least in this part of the country, in this atmosphere and culture, the personal aspect is appealing as well and encourages more of a conversation between performer and audience. 

For those of you who might find it interesting, here is a listing of what has been on each program. Please excuse any discrepancies in formatting.

Recital I: At the very beginning

Prelude and Fugue in C major
Beethoven's Für Elise
Clementi Sonatina in D major
Prelude and Fugue in C minor
Bartók Sonatina
Prelude and Fugue in C# major
Mozart Sonata in C major, KV 545
Prelude and Fugue in C# minor
Selections from Schumann's "Scenes from Childhood"

Recital II: A musical life in San Francisco

Prelude and Fugue in D major
Chopin Fantasie-Impromptu, Op. 66
Opening to the slow movement of Ravel's G major piano concerto
Prelude and Fugue in D minor
Dvorák's Slavonic Dances, numbers 1 & 2 from Op. 48 (sightread at performance on purpose)
Prelude and Fugue in E flat major
The Swan from Saint-Saën's "Carnival of the Animals" (I used to play cello too)
Prelude and Fugue in D# minor
Selections from Debussy's "Children's Corner"

Recital III: College living

Prelude and Fugue in E major
Debussy's L'isle joyeuse
Prelude and Fugue in E minor
Hwaen Ch'uqi's Souvenir 
Prelude and Fugue in F major
Rachmaninoff's Prelude in B minor, Op. 32, no. 10
Prelude and Fugue in F minor
Selections from Satie's "Sports et divertissements"

Recital IV: From the Golden Gate to the Alps (about my months working as a restaurant pianist)

Debussy's 1st Arabesque
Prelude and Fugue in F# major
Bill Evans' Waltz for Debby
Prelude and Fugue in F# minor
Beryl Rubinstein's concert transcription of "Summertime" from Porgy and Bess
Prelude and Fugue in G major
September Song from Knickerbocker Holiday (performed with my husband, baritone Tadd Sipes)
I Got Plenty O' Nuttin' from Porgy and Bess
Johanna from Sweeney Todd 
Prelude and Fugue in G minor

Recital V: Marriage, becoming a mom, and more

Prelude and Fugue in A flat major
Ravel's Jeux d'eau
Prelude and Fugue in G# minor
Finzi's Eclogue (performed with organ instead of string orchestra)
Prelude and Fugue in A major
Gounod's "O divine redeemer" (performed with a student I collaborated with and taught)
Sorenson's "In this hour"
Prelude and Fugue in A minor
Radnich's arrangement of "Hedwig's Theme" from Harry Potter

Recital VI: Looking ahead

Prelude and Fugue in B flat major
Selections from Schubert's "Wintereisse" (performed with my husband, baritone Tadd Sipes)
Prelude and Fugue in B flat minor
Tiersen's "A song from another summer" from the movie Amelie
Prelude and Fugue in B major
Pärt's Für Alina
Prelude and Fugue in B minorHough's transcription of "My Favorite Things" from the Sound of Music




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Unbridled joy and unwavering grace - Bach's Prelude and Fugue in G major

I'm making it through the second book of Bach's Well-Tempered Clavier - slowly, but surely.

I skipped to the G major Prelude and Fugue this week, partly because I find it somewhat easier than some of the others that are remaining, but also because this particular set never fails to make me smile.  Is it because it's in the particularly sunny key of G major?  Or is it something else?

Image by Nancy Heise,
from Wikimedia Commons

The best way I can think of to describe the prelude is that it brings to my mind unbridled joy.  I haven't had a lot of interaction with horses in my life on a personal level but I have always been mesmerized by them, especially when I've seen them running wild out in the pasture or just out in nature.  Their energy is powerful and positive, full of strength but also fun.  That's the feeling I strive for when playing this particular prelude.  The strength comes in the form of the endless fast notes that go back and forth between the right and left hands, sometimes joining one another in a race.  The fun comes in the contrasting eighth notes that play off the faster sixteenths, giving our wild horses a bit of a dance as they frolic and buck, trying to out-do one another's antics.  At the end one horse succeeds with a mad dash to the end.

After their moment of unbridled joy, the horses are brought back into the ring and readied for some graceful work when it comes time for the fugue.  Although it's wonderful to watch them wild in the fields, I find something incredibly meditative and awesome about watching a horse and its rider working together to produce the graceful, calculated but artful steps they can perform.  Each hoof strikes the ground in such a calculated way and it can create an even rhythm that could be put up to the test of any metronome.  For me, the faster notes in this fugue represent those even but gentle hoof strikes that need to keep the rider steady and unwavering in order to win the blue ribbon in the end.  But true to the nature of most horses, the one in this fugue can't help but show a bit of his personality in the end - he sneaks in just a little bit of that unbridled joy at the very end of the fugue, perhaps recalling the playfulness he just experienced out in the fields.  

And P.S. - I've now officially done half of the preludes and fugues!  I think that deserves a cookie, ice cream, or something.

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A study in color and frivolity - Bach's B minor Prelude and Fugue

It seems that it's taking me longer and longer to get these preludes and fugues posted but I will persevere!  This time it is music that has gotten in my way - lots of it.  But another thing that has come into play is that I've managed to hit yet another wall in this project.  I got stuck at the exact same point in the book when I was going through and learning them all several years back - I breezed through the first 10 or so and then wham!  Standstill.  After months of attempting to push forward, what did I do?  I flipped to the end of the book and worked backwards through the rest of the book.  I like practicing backwards so why not?

It worked then so skipping a handful of preludes and fugues, I'm now at the Prelude and Fugue in B minor.  Yes, there's a lot in between that we've missed but I promise, we'll get there...eventually.  And regarding the video quality and angle in these videos, they're not stellar, I realize.  It was one of those moments when I was playing around with my new video camera and the prelude and fugue seemed to actually click with me so I decided to just go with it.  Perhaps I'll get a better take eventually and will swap them out.  

The B minor Prelude mesmerizes me.  I play it as a sort of meditation because of its incredibly profound simplicity.  It is made up of very few motives and ideas that keep me grounded in one thought.  But as with many meditations, Bach takes me on a journey with this one thought by holding it under different colored filters to show how one idea, one concept, can come across in an entirely new way if explored in a different context.  Within two pages of music we hear the main subject of the prelude in B minor (brooding,) D major (sweet,) E minor (lonely,) F-sharp minor (dour,) and then finally back to B minor which now, thanks to our journey, feels more resigned than brooding, at least to me.  In the classical music world there is debate as to whether or not keys have unique colors.  After working on this prelude I am on the side of those that believe that yes, different keys are very distinct from one another.

And the fugue.  Surprise, surprise, I found this fugue a little bit tricky because of some particularly nasty little trills that Bach decided to incorporate into the countersubject at the beginning.  Thankfully the countersubject dies a rather quick death and is gone after only a few lines.  I'd like to think that the composer himself had difficulty executing the ornaments and chose to move onto something more playable.  

One thing I find fascinating about this final fugue in the book is that Bach seems to actually throw away his own fugal conventions, choosing instead to focus on playfulness and frivolity in the many long episodes and sequences that take up the latter half of the piece.  Practically forgetting the subject altogether (its last full appearance is in the middle of the fugue) he plays around instead with a crazy sixteenth-note accompaniment that shows up in both hands and that defy the ear because of its wide range.  To the ear it sounds like the sixteenths are dancing around the other voices, making it virtually impossible to separate the individual parts.  For the pianist, this can be extraordinarily challenging.  For the listener, it can be dizzying but also incredibly thrilling.    Hmmm...maybe I should just listen to  someone else playing this fugue from now on!

To read and view more preludes and fugues from this project of mine, please see the list of links to them on the right-hand side of the webpage.  And keep in mind there are plenty more to come.  Just stay tuned!


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Never able to stay serious for long - Bach's E minor Prelude and Fugue

Painting by James Tissot, from
Wikimedia Commons

Yes.  It's been awhile, hasn't it?  It looks like I started this Bach Prelude and Fugue project about a year ago with the hopes of recording all 24 by this coming May.  Well, I may have to extend my deadline just a bit, but I'll forgive myself in the name of sanity.  In case you're new to my blog please feel free to read my opening post of this project, "I think I've finally lost it! Putting Bach's book 2 of the WTC on YouTube."  To sum it up, I'm doing this for my own well-being or because I'm insane and I don't have any intention for these recordings to be perfect.  I consider these "out-of-the-starting-gate" experiences so please consider yourself forewarned - there are plenty of mistakes but lots of heart!  Perhaps in twenty years I'll feel like I can actually perform them all.  

So Bach's E minor Prelude and Fugue.  Yet again, this set from the second book of his Well-Tempered Clavier, offers up another wonderful contrast to both the pianist and the listener.  The Prelude is, to my ears, a prim and proper pianistic prelude, energized by a constant stream of sixteenth-notes.  It is also chock full of the voices imitating one another in a very respectful way.

But the fugue...ah, the fugue...I find this fugue, in addition to being long and challenging (what's new?), to be really quite hilarious.  Take the subject that starts off the entire piece.  Within one very long subject we hear triplets, sixteenths, dotted rhythms.  It sneaks around in the most child-hearted way, layering the different rhythms on top of one another which at times sounds like laughing, at other times skipping.  All the while, however, the sinister mood of the prelude seems to lurk in the background;  it is reminiscent, perhaps, of a parental figure trying to remind his or her little ones that this is, after all, Bach.

To read and view more preludes and fugues from this project of mine, please see the list of links to them on the right-hand side of the webpage.  And keep in mind there are plenty more to come.  Just stay tuned!


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Lace next to wrought-iron: Bach's E major Prelude & Fugue

Photo from Wikimedia Commons

There is something about J.S. Bach's E major Prelude and Fugue that gives me an incredible sense of peace and balance.  It might have something to do with the sunny, warm key of E major but I think it also has to do with the structures that Bach manages to build through his music.   In the prelude my ears can trace the thin, delicate strands of thread that intertwine throughout, weaving together what sounds to my ears like exquisite musical lacework.  In contrast, the fugue's main subject offers the sturdy sense of ornamental architecture offered by something like decorative wrought-iron work.  Individual voices still intertwine but in a sturdier, less fragile way.  

Photo taken by Jurgen Howaldt, from
Wikimedia Commons

Another quality about the fugue that I feel is quite unique and that seems modeled after an architectural style is the way that Bach takes his relatively simple, arch-like subject and proceeds to vary it in a number of ways throughout the middle section of the fugue.  Bach presents variations of the subject in other fugues as well but not to the extent that he does here.  After changing the rhythm and adding filler notes here and there the subject becomes almost undetectable, at least to my eyes and ears, yet underneath I still sense a feeling of order, of structure.  When the subject returns near the end, back in its original state, it feels as if the world is clicking back into place after being taken for a bit of an ornamental ride.

Lace. And wrought-iron.

Complete opposites in many ways, yet similar in that their strength and beauty come from the intricate, intertwining of some very basic elements.  And also similar in their ability to hypnotize my mind and to take me to a much more sensible world.  That is always a welcome place to be.   Why not join me?

So first, the lace:

And now the wrought-iron:

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Sinuous, slithering sound - Bach's Prelude and Fugue in D sharp minor

Perhaps it's because I am a big fan of the Harry Potter series and because I recently saw the latest installment in the movie theater - I simply can't get the vision of sinuous, slithering snakes out of my mind when it comes to Bach's 8th Prelude and Fugue, in D sharp minor. It probably doesn't help that having to play in this key (6 sharps!) forces the pianist to maneuver in and out of the black keys with a feeling much similar to that of this most-beloved creature. It also doesn't help that the challenge of playing in this key tends to cause my mind to twist and turn and to pull tighter and tighter in upon itself as some snakes do in order to catch their next meal. Sounds a little dramatic, you say? Perhaps, but all I can say is that I can usually only take these pieces in small doses, especially the Prelude. And in case you haven't figured it out, I'm not a big fan of snakes.

But no worries. I may not like snakes and I may not have warm fuzzy feelings for this prelude and fugue set but Bach being Bach, I still find great beauty in this music. The Prelude is a wonderful example of the composer's ease at speaking in counterpoint, with its invention-like feel, 2 voices imitating one another and intertwining in a mathematical but intimate way. It's sort of like the photo of these two snakes. Yes they are snakes, but together, intertwined, they create a moment of great beauty. It speaks to me of the simple joys found in companionship.

Photo by SB_Johnson, from Wikipedia Commons

And the Fugue...this time not just two snakes but rather four, creating an even more intricate fusion of life. And to top it all off, Bach places two voices, the soprano and the tenor, in a mirror image of one another as the final statement of this wonderful fugue.

I can't help but think of the image that is used to represent the medical profession - two snakes wrapping themselves around a staff. What a wonderful, tidy way to put our snakes to rest.

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Finding time for playfulness: Bach's E-flat major Prelude and Fugue

Painting by E.G. Haussmann

When I think about Bach's music, I rarely think to describe it as playful. Perhaps it's from looking at those serious portraits of the composer like the one here. Or maybe it's because his music can be unbelievably challenging, especially his finger-twisting fugues - the last thing I think of doing while playing a particularly nasty one is smiling. But I do believe Bach was fully capable of being playful, and spirited, and ebullient. He was, after all, a father to 20 children. I imagine there was quite a lot of laughter to be found in his home, and I also am guessing, thanks to this E-flat major Prelude, that there was also plenty of teasing, taunting, and childish terrorizing that went on.

Every time I hear or play this particular prelude, I can't help but think of a little teasing game my own family plays from time to time. In our household, we are very, very good at being serious, perhaps too serious. We are also good at being dramatic, usually choosing to air on the side of being melodramatic, of course. Well, when one of us notices what's happening, that we're all being swept down the river of pessimism and grumbles, he or she will say, "OK, that's it. Today is a very, very serious day. Nobody laugh. Nobody smile. Wait...what's that I see? Do I see the corners of your mouth starting to turn up?" We continue in this vain until we all burst out laughing or smiling. It never fails.

I think Bach and his family could have shared the same strategy. The prelude starts off happy enough but after a few lines, it seems to make a turn toward the more serious. This is where the play begins. He starts by alternating short, descending, laughing motives in the right hand - "Now don't laugh." This is followed up with a more serious, ascending, whining motive - "You must be serious." . After a couple of these exchanges, Bach starts into a hilarious sequence of material that repeats numerous times with what sounds like hiccuping, or laughing, or teasing in the left hand. At first the intervals he uses are sevenths but then in the last four measures of the sequence, the left hand plays 9ths - a very wide and odd interval, especially to be repeated over and over again, and especially in a piece by Bach. If he had simply bumped the second notes of the two-note hiccups up an octave, these motives would have sounded perfectly normal. If Bach could join in my family's little jibing session, I think he would have used this to break us down, sending us into fits of giggles.

It works for me. What follows is one last struggle to keep drama in the picture which quickly fails and leaves me in a much lighter mood for the rest of the piece.

The E-flat major fugue, for me, is the contentedness that follows after such a silly family moment. With a renewed, more optimistic perspective on life again, the fugue is almost entirely free of drama or angst. And with surprisingly few subject entries, there is a lot of room for musical strolling, with no concern for the expectations or protocol expected with a fugue. But Bach doesn't forget playfulness all-together in this fugue. There are a handful of subjects in which the rhythm at the beginning is altered just slightly, changing the first note from a whole note to a half-note and transforming that one note into an upbeat.

Perhaps that's a subtle, slight tease that Bach throws in there, just to make sure we're listening...

...and smiling.

Other posts in this series:

Prelude and Fugue 1 in C major

Prelude and Fugue 2 in C minor

Prelude and Fugue 3 in C-sharp major

Prelude and Fugue 4 in  C-sharp minor
Prelude and Fugue 5 in D major
Prelude and Fugue 6 in D minor



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My personal Mt. Everest: Bach's C-sharp minor Prelude and Fugue

I wasn't planning on getting this post up tonight but I think I need to.  This particular prelude and fugue, the C-sharp minor from book 2 of the Well-Tempered Clavier, has been somewhat of a nightmare for me, which is highly unusual because  I love Bach,  I live Bach,  I rely on Bach to give me peace of mind. So what's the deal? Why all the angst?

First of all, the fugue has a lot of notes that never stop and I've had a very difficult time figuring out how to practice it so that I can simply get through it without stopping. If you're interested, you can read more about this particular struggle in a post I wrote back in July - "Living Life on the Edge - a practice technique discovery." By the end of the post I was feeling pretty optimistic. I was forecasting a successful recording in the near future. Well, it's September now and as you can see, that prediction was a bit premature. In spite of some new practicing techniques - playing the music backwards, practicing in short little bursts up to tempo - I still couldn't make it through.

And the Prelude. I usually like slower Bach movements but this one had me stumped. It's long and there are ornaments all over the place - implied ornaments, written-in ornaments, ornaments that aren't written in but probably should be there somehow, ornaments I had never seen before ("acciaccaturas" are not Italian sneezes, believe it or not!) You can read all of my bellyaching about it in, "Play it again Sam...and again, and again, and again..."

Now on to the music.

I hear the prelude as being a slow movement in trio-sonata form, meaning 2 melodic voices accompanied by a bass line. One can hear the melodic material being passed from one voice to another, and even to the bass part at times. Every once in a while the mostly melancholic sound of the prelude breaks and the voices strain towards something more dance-like but these attempts at lifting the mood never last very long. It's as if the pull of raw emotion is too great to overcome.

For me personally, this piece is all about my journey thus far as a mother. I've talked about it a bit in another post but basically I've had a very challenging time dealing with this change in my life and figuring out how to balance my passion for music with my love for my family. I had post-partum depression and extreme anxiety for most of my daughter's early years which you may be able to hear in the beginning material of the prelude and when it returns later on. The lighter, more graceful music in the middle I associate with the times when the awesome and wonderfully child-like natures of my daughter and husband have worked their magic, pulling me out of myself and into their arms.

The fugue. I don't know what more to say about this fugue. It's hard. It's fast. And it only lasts two quick minutes. If you like scavenger hunts, see if you can hear the subject when Bach uses its inversion or in non-musical terms, when it's upside-down. I have this sneaking suspicion that Bach probably had a grand old time playing this fugue and knocking the socks of everyone around.

So here's the fugue...it's not perfect, not even close, so please do be forgiving. I promise I'll re-record it someday, when I'm on friendlier terms with it.

All right, I'm done now.  Tomorrow I climb a new mountain!

Other posts in this series:

Prelude and Fugue 1 in C major

Prelude and Fugue 2 in C minor

Prelude and Fugue 3 in C-sharp major

Prelude and Fugue 5 in D major

Prelude and Fugue 6 in D minor
Prelude and Fugue 7 in E-flat major

Weaving spiderwebs of sound: Bach's D minor Prelude and Fugue

First of all, I want to say that I absolutely love this prelude and fugue. For whatever reason, they make complete sense to me. Even though they are different from one another in terms of the amount of energy with which they are imbued, playing them puts me in a bit of a hypnotic state, leaving me to feel as though my mind and spirit have been returned to a more peaceful, balanced state. I know, I know...I can imagine that I'm sounding a bit crazy at this point, but I can't help it. This is one of those prelude and fugue sets that is simply magical to me.

So what is it that makes these pieces have this effect on me?

The one image that repeatedly comes to mind with this prelude and fugue is the image of a spider, spinning a web. As there is symmetry in a web, there is also symmetry in both of these pieces; when one voice goes up, the other voice goes down; when one voice plays the fugue subject as written, and another places the fugue subject upside-down. Here are two excerpts that I scanned to show what I'm talking about.

First a clip from the Prelude:

And now a clip from the fugue:

I even find looking at excerpts such as these calming. To be able to see and hear such beauty in symmetry is remarkably refreshing.

So are there any differences between the prelude and fugue? Yes, absolutely, and it's the contrast that makes this set an exquisite pair. In the prelude we find ourselves in almost a mechanical, fast-forward drive from beginning to end without any rest. Going back to the spider-web example, it's a bit like watching a spider spinning its web with a time-lapse setting. And in the fugue, we are given the time to watch our spider spinning at its own pace. And because Bach chose to write this as a fugue with only three voices, there is delicacy that is maintained throughout which mimics the delicacy of the web perfectly. The step-wise and chromatic nature of the lines remind me of the creepy-crawliness (I know, not a word) of spiders' legs.

Wait... what's that crawling...up... your... arm?

EEEEECK!!!

Oh, and here are the videos. Enjoy!

The Prelude:

and the Fugue:

Other posts in this series:

Prelude and Fugue 1 in C major

Prelude and Fugue 2 in C minor

Prelude and Fugue 3 in C-sharp major

Prelude and Fugue 4 in  C-sharp minor
Prelude and Fugue 5 in D major
Prelude and Fugue 7 in E-flat major

From rollicking dance to fugal hymn - Bach's D major Prelude and Fugue

I know, I know. I'm missing a prelude and fugue here. I'm terribly sorry but I do believe that I'm just going to have to skip the C-sharp minor set for now. You can read about why on here. I have decided that I just want to move on for now because I am missing Bach terribly and this whole episode with that particular prelude and fugue is, well, just not happening.

So ahem, moving on now...

The fifth prelude and fugue from Bach's second book of the Well-Tempered Clavier is a fabulous contrast in many ways to the previous set. Out of the gnarled, tangled key of C-sharp minor we find ourselves in one of the sunniest, robust keys that I know of, D major. The prelude is truly hilarious to me with its mash-up of styles. I hear a gigue with its compound, dancing and skipping rhythms, a French overture or some time of fanfare with the crisp double-dotted rhythms, a toccata with its fanciful, fast runs of sixteenth notes and also some sort of graceful smooth dance, with the more square legato, step-wise figures. Put them all together and you have a mighty fun dance that leaves me, quite frankly, out of breath.

Here is the Prelude in D major:

The fugue transports us from the country dance scene to the church. (Perhaps all of those rambunctious dancers needed to atone for some of their merriment.) This 4 voice fugue is extraordinarily simplistic, using very few rhythms and employing few fancy subject treatments. No backwards or upside-down subjects, or subjects stretched out and slowed down. Here you just get the subject repeated over and over again, one on top of another. And since few rhythms are used, much of the time the movement is homophonic, meaning the voices move together. It reminds me a bit of hearing hymns in church. Unlike the prelude, there is a solemnity and simplicity to this fugue that helps me to put aside all of the excess energy of the day and to focus on the simple beauty of a simple subject.

Other posts in this series:

Prelude and Fugue 1 in C major

Prelude and Fugue 2 in C minor

Prelude and Fugue 3 in C-sharp major
Prelude and Fugue 4 in  C-sharp minor
Prelude and Fugue 6 in D minor

Prelude and Fugue 7 in E-flat major

Play it again, Sam...and again, and again, and again...

I am stuck...very, very stuck.  More specifically, my Bach Well-Tempered Clavier project is stuck and it really doesn't feel good at all.  I'm actually downright discouraged at the moment.  So what has happened?  How did I get to this lovely wall that I'm standing at?

Problem #1: I dislike the act of recording myself playing music.  Recording is really kind of an unnatural act, at least for me, because I work best when I have a physical, present audience to interact with.  I love to see and hear other peoples' responses to the music, whether the feedback is a barely-perceptible sigh of release or a restless turning or dropping of a program.  When I am recording, when I get to the end of a movement or a piece, I get...nothing.  It's just me, the microphones, the computer, and the worst audience member you can ever have at any performance, my brain.  Oh the things my brain comes up with during these sessions - it can get downright psychologically bloody up there with all the dissecting that comes with recording.  "Did you hear that?  The first time through I did OK on the first half of the fugue, but then in the second measure of the second half, I bungled that third note in the left hand.  And my tone was so bad!" or "Was the second performance better than the first or was that the previous movement that the first performance was actually more accurate than the second?  What piece did I just play?"  These conversations start almost immediately too - it's not like I have much of a window of inspiration.  In a live performance I am pretty good at pushing all of those inappropriate comments out the door so that I can enjoy the moment but I just can't get myself to that point with recording.  

Problem #2: The C-sharp minor Prelude perplexes me and the Fugue is a finger-twister.  I went through and learned all of the book II preludes and fugues a year ago.  I considered that time around as prep-work for more serious study.  I remember how I felt about the C-sharp minor Prelude when I first started working on it - I simply didn't get it and I never felt an urge to just play it through during my non-practice times.  That is very unusual when you're dealing with me and Bach - I can almost always play his music with a sense of peace, reflection, or meditation.  Perhaps it's my tendency to play this particular prelude too slowly, or maybe it's the the long length, about 8 minutes long.  There are also the ornaments, appogiaturas, and acciaccaturas (what the heck are those?!).  I can handle pieces with a sprinkling here and there of this fancy stuff, but when the ornamentation is actually part of the whole point of the piece?  It shows just how green I am with what used to be natural to your professional church or court musician.  Recently I enlisted the help of a local harpsichordist who can play this type of music like I envisioned they played it during that period in history.  She gave me many great ideas about how to approach it and it has gotten a little bit easier, but I still feel like a foreigner trying to speak a language I don't intuitively understand.  

And the fugue...ah, the fugue.  If you ever need to see something scary, just turn to this lovely fugue.  The piece is an endless braid of fast notes.  I have tried my own tried-and-true methods to get notes comfortable in my fingers and in my head.  I have also tried a new method that I described in an earlier blog post, "Living life on the edge - a new practice technique discovery."  Although playing it in small chunks up-to tempo and beyond has helped increase my confidence, I am still unable to play through the entire fugue without stumbling.  Something must be missing.  I put a "tweet" out on twitter last week, bemoaning my situation and was thankful that many twitter friends responded with a new recommendation to try practicing the fugue, hands separately, and then here's the kicker, backwards! Now I talk about learning and memorizing pieces backwards all the time but I have never done it note-for-note backwards.  Sounds a little unbelievable to me, but this week I did start trying it and it can, indeed be done.  So, we'll see what happens.  If it ends up working, I think I'm going to owe @JoseSPiano and @craigswanson a drink of their choosing!  If it doesn't work...well, I'm not going to go there.

So I don't really know why I decided to blog about all this.  I suppose it's largely because these problems have been taking quite a large portion of my energy lately and I thought it would be good to share the bad stuff along with the good stuff.  For now, I'm putting the Bach a bit on the backburner since I don't have an official deadline but you can be sure that I will not give up!

Living life on the edge: a practice technique discovery

I am a very safe person.  I am a very thorough person.  And I pride myself on accuracy and discipline.  These qualities are painfully obvious when I'm practicing and they usually serve me well.  

But I recently hit a wall, a humongous wall - the C# minor Fugue from book II of Bach's Well-Tempered Clavier.  It may only be a 3-voice fugue but it's fast...really fast.  And there are lots and lots of notes.  It's one of those pieces that when you look at the pages, all you see is black.  Some people might think that's just an exaggeration when a musician complains of black pages, but I'm here to say it's true, it really is.

I didn't do anything different to begin learning this fugue; I started from the end, working in small chunks until I reached the beginning; I took time to choose and write in fingerings; I worked out which hands were going to take which notes.  Once the notes were learned, I did what I always do with technically difficult pieces, I started working it up with the metronome, being sure to bump up the metronome marking only when I could nail it at the tempo I was currently at.  Brava, Erica, Brava...so responsible, right?

Well, not really.  Perhaps it was responsible but it simply wasn't working.   

Thankfully, while twittering the other day, I read that an accomplished pianist, Valentina Lisitsa, was going to live stream her practice sessions every day this week.  She practices 12-13 hours a day (I'm not so sure that's a great thing, by the way) so there's a lot of time to catch her at it. (Click here to watch some of it.)  I decided to watch a bit and I was amazed by the fact that most of her practicing, even of technically difficult passages, were practiced quite quickly and I sensed that a lot of the time she was trying to just memorize gestures - there wasn't as much of a concern about each and every individual note.  It dawned on me that perhaps I should just live life on the edge, throw off my security blanket, and simply go for it.  

So that's what I did.  I was careful to try this method without jeopardizing my commitment to not repeating the same mistake twice and to keeping a relaxed mind and body- two of the maxims I live by. I also wanted to maintain musicality throughout the process in spite of the fact that my body and mind really wanted to panic.   Here's a video showing how it all went...

This is a new way of practicing for me and it really is a bit scary but I think it was starting to work by the end of just a half-hour of practicing.  What a relief!  And thank you twitter friends and Valentina Lisitsa.  Just goes to show you that there's always something new to try and new to learn!

So here's hoping that I'll finally be able to record this Prelude and Fugue so that I can move on with my Bach project.  Now please excuse me...I have some more cliffs to jump off of!

A spiritual and scientific look at Creation: Bach's C-sharp major Prelude and Fugue

I can't forget the first time I learned Bach's C-sharp major Prelude and Fugue from book 2 of the Well-Tempered Clavier.  With the prelude, I was immediately drawn in and captivated by the incredible beauty and simplicity of the writing.  With the fugue, I was completely and utterly perplexed by the disjointed nature of the writing.  In more simplistic terms, I fell in love with the prelude but fell into frustration with the fugue.  As with all of Bach's works, however, I have grown to love both and have managed to build a bridge connecting the two.  For me, and keep in mind that this is really just my imagination that has conjured up this image, this set of pieces gives me a glimpse of how Bach saw Creation - the prelude shows us a spiritual view and the fugue, a scientific one.  

In the prelude, Bach has yet again found a way to suspend time through music through a gentle harmonic journey.  The first section, which takes up most of the piece, is a 4-voice choir, each voice with a different purpose.  The bass lays the foundation while the tenor rides along above it with a constant eighth-note motor.  It is this tenor voice that seems to motivate the rest of the voices, with the alto and soprano voices' alternating sixteenths gracefully ornamenting the slow flow of harmonies.  After a gradual increase in intensity, the prelude then launches into a short, quick finale, with three voices imitating one another until we reach the end.  I hear the first section as a representation of Life as it is being created by a creator - a weaving of beauty from nothingness into glory.  The closing section serves as a celebration of this new creation - an act of unrestrained joy.

The fugue takes a more scientific look at Creation.  Here we start with a few single cells, the 5 notes of the subject or theme being represented by 5 short eight notes.  The three voices enter in rapid succession and without much regard to convention since the third entrance already turns the subject upside-down.  After the initial statements of the subject, Bach begins to use these "cells" to create larger, more complex organisms, at times dissecting the subject into even smaller units, and at other times, expanding them and ornamenting them beyond recognition.  Once we start to see these more complex creations, Bach inserts the subject in an augmented form, doubling the duration of each note so that no longer is the subject small particles of matter.  Now the subject is a self-sustaining creation whose presence cannot be ignored underneath the other voices that surround it with increasingly ornamented flourishes of life which race on until the triumphant end.

Other posts in this series:

Prelude and Fugue 1 in C major

Prelude and Fugue 2 in C minor
Prelude and Fugue 4 in  C-sharp minor
Prelude and Fugue 5 in D major
Prelude and Fugue 6 in D minor
Prelude and Fugue 7 in E-flat major

                  

From simplicity to complexity - Bach's C minor Prelude and Fugue

I have been looking forward to recording the second Prelude and Fugue from the second book of Bach's Well-Tempered Clavier for quite a while now.  For me, it is a journey from simplicity into complexity.  The Prelude is very reminiscent of one of Bach's Inventions, with a simple passing of musical material between the right and left hands of the pianist.  Every few measures, he then joins the hands, engaging them together in sequences that take the listener from one key to another.  Harmonically speaking, there are no curve balls here.  In the first half, Bach takes us from C minor to the relative major, E-flat.  Starting the second section in the same key, he sequentially moves us up to F minor where he then begins a final long sequential descent back to the home key of C minor.  The simplicity of all of this would be difficult to miss.  The passing of a steady stream of fast notes between the hands has a bit of a hypnotic effect on me when I play or listen to this piece.  It's almost as if Bach wanted to get me to a certain place before beginning one of the richest fugues I know.

In this relatively short fugue of only 28 measures, Bach pulls out just about all the cards he can.  He takes the subject, made up of only 5 notes, and varies it, sometimes by changing the subject's rhythm, but also by inverting it (what went up the first-time around, now goes down and what went down, now goes up), by augmenting it (he makes every note twice as long) and also has them entering in stretto (the voices enter with the subject before another voice has finished its turn - basically, it's interrupting!).  And if that isn't enough, he combines all of these variations of the subject in the second half, placing them one on top of another.  Another interesting thing to note is that although this fugue is considered a four-voice fugue, the fourth voice does not enter into the picture until well into the second half of the fugue and when it does come in, it is augmented and surrounded by the other voices that are involved in some complex rhythmic interplay.  When I get to this spot I can't help but feel that Bach is trying to say something...it's as if he is saying, "Listen - this is what I have to say!"  I only wish I knew what that something is.  

Any thoughts?

So here they are...first the Prelude in C minor:

And the Fugue...




Other posts in this series:
Prelude and Fugue 1 in C major
Prelude and Fugue 3 in C-sharp major
Prelude and Fugue 4 in  C-sharp minor
Prelude and Fugue 5 in D major
Prelude and Fugue 6 in D minor
Prelude and Fugue 7 in E-flat major

I think I've finally lost it! Putting Bach's book 2 of the WTC on YouTube

Last year I managed to learn all 24 of the preludes and fugues from J.S. Bach's Well Tempered Clavier.  It was challenging, inspiring, and incredibly interesting.  But of course as with any project such as this, I found myself asking, "Now what?" as soon as I had finished what I had set out to do.  Unlike most musical projects I work on, this was one that I couldn't easily present as a neat and tidy package at the very end - 24 preludes and fugues?  Who wants to sit through all of that?  I toyed around with several different ideas about how I could perform them but I never found a solution I was happy with.  But I'm back at it again and I have figured out my next move.  Starting today and ending within a year, I am going to videotape each and every prelude and fugue and put them up on YouTube.  I'm using a Flip video camera, which doesn't have the best sound, but that's ok.  This is just something I feel I have to do.  And when I post each video on my blog, I'm going to try and say a few words about the music because this music is incredible and I want to share why I feel that way about each individual piece.  

I do think I've finally lost it.

All right then...ready...set...GO!

Prelude and Fugue in C major

The Prelude in this set makes me smile because Bach was his typically clever self when putting this one together.  It took me a while to figure it out, but about halfway through this prelude, Bach takes the first part, excluding the introductory measures, and repeats it only in a different key and, here's the kicker, he shifts everything by two beats.  In other words, what fell on the first beat in the first section, now falls on the third beat; what fell on the third beat in the first section, now falls on the downbeat.  I don't think this is really perceptible to the listener and as I suggested before, it took many hours of practicing before I even knew what was going on.  But to me, that makes it all the more clever.  I feel like Bach is one of my kindred spirits...he takes such great joy out of challenging himself, playing games, and creating a lot out of just a little.  If he still lived today I would tell him he's a very "green" composer.

The Fugue is a pretty straight-forward three-voice fugue.  Basically Bach just plays around with the two different figures that make up the subject.  There's the opening motive that dances around the interval of a perfect fifth and then there's a string of sixteenths that weaves around the notes from that first motive.  What I love about the subject is that Bach managed to squeeze in two very different feelings within such a short subject.  Again, I consider him a green composer because he is so compact in the way he presents the material.  For the remainder of the fugue, he composes sequence after sequence, using the first motive first and then using the second motive to build on in the next sequence.  What I love about this fugue is that it is simple, not profound, and that it is incredibly light and bubbly - a nice way to start off this mammoth work!

With that said, here's Prelude #1, in C major:

And the Fugue:

Stay tuned for the rest :-)  Thanks for listening!

Other posts in this series:

Prelude and Fugue 2 in C minor

Prelude and Fugue 3 in C-sharp major
Prelude and Fugue 4 in  C-sharp minor
Prelude and Fugue 5 in D major
Prelude and Fugue 6 in D minor
Prelude and Fugue 7 in E-flat major